Sitcom Secrets: Mighty Morphing Siblings

In a sitcom, siblings are magical and can pop up, disappear, reappear, and do all kinds of bizarre tricks. Don't believe me? Take a look for yourself.

The Anti Chuck Cunnigham. In real life, you can't spontaneously get an older brother or sister. I don't care what they told you at the Big Brothers and Sisters of America. You only get new siblings who are younger than you in real life. I always wished for an older sibling, though--an older sister whose clothes and makeup I'd rifle through or an older brother who would beat up on any guy who dared to stand me up. (Having a younger sibling can be fun, like the time I convinced my little brother that whiplash is when you get into a car accident and your neck falls off.)

But when you're in sitcom land, all bets are off. The best excuse for a spontaneously appearing older sibling is that they were away at school all this time and no one thought to mention them. Chip Crosswire of Arthur and Sondra Huxtable I'm looking at you.

Gretchen Witter also gets a nod because even though Pacey's older sisters are mentioned in a generic sort of way, we never get a real mention of her till season four when they retconned a whole "Gretchen was Dawson's absolute first love, before Jen or Joey, back when he was a horny preteen" to give Dawson something to do when Joey and Pacey were getting it on. Gretchen's also a reverse anti Chuck Cunningham because after she's had enough of Dawson, she returns back to Fictional U, never to return again.

Half brother (or sister) from another planet. This occurs when you realize that one of your parents has been catting it up on the side.

Like, if you're Shawn Hunter, you can go from having an off screen never seen older sister to having a cute, rich half brother from your father's first marriage which he decided not to say anything about for no real reason. And not just any half brother--one of the Lawrence brothers. And what luck--the one who didn't have "Whoa" as a catch phrase and who somehow wasn't traumatized by at one point having Sally Field as a mom and a cross-dressing, voice-acting, Scottish nanny for a dad. I used to pray that my dad had an undisclosed marriage that resulted in an older half sibling for me when I was a young teen, never realizing the icky Joe Jackson esque implications of it.

Or you can get really lucky...like if your philandering dad had an affair with a carnie who rolled into town years ago. And the carnie gave birth to your half-brother who's the CEO of his own car company and who came up with an invention that translated baby speak.

Of course, it can also be sort of creepy. Like if you're the sexy blonde character at Capeside, and a blonde hussy with a pixie cut and a penchant for wearing bikini tops in New England autumnal weather shows up to bewitch, bother and bewilder every male thing in sight. (And to reveal, eventually, that Jen Lindley's mother gave up a child for adoption. Stupid B-plot that never went anywhere.)

Evil parents. If you have a long lost sibling, don't you think this is the kind of thing your parents should have maybe kind of brought up? Like Hayley Mills and Hayley Mills in The Parent Trap and her parents who split up, each taking one twin girl until the two girls reunite as teenagers at summer camp, plotting to get their parents back together. (And no, despite my pop culture savvy, I refuse to pander to the young uns by replacing "Hayley Mills" with "Lindsay Lohan." Oh, fine, I will say this--back when Miss Bliss was Disney's Lindsay Lohan.)

As a child, I wondered if I too had a hidden away sibling because my parents weren't telling me something. But no. I didn't find anything incriminating when I searched the attic (after wearing out my copies of Face on the Milk Carton and Claudia and the Great Search, natch). No weird papers or notes. Not even a bucket of half eaten fishheads.

Aging at the speed of life. Sitcoms also taught me that it doesn't matter if you hate changing diapers or dealing with tantrums. You'll never have to. Audiences love cuddly babies but they grow weary of two and three year olds (Full House fans and pedophiles aside). After all, you need to be at least five to be able to coin your own catch phrase. Hence, the freakiness that was Nicky Banks and Andy Keaton, both of whom aged so fast that they either had the aging disorder that Robin Williams had in Jack or their moms had affairs with Klingons (which would explain why they axed the first Mama Banks).

Back in the closet. If you have a particularly boring sibling, sometimes the powers that be intervene and wish those worthless sibs into the cornfield. Like if you're Chuck Cunningham but Ritchie already has an older male influence in his life. Or if you're Nebula "Stop the War" Lawrence and you were only a walk on one joke character (and you were basically collateral damage when the writers decided to retcon that pesky "Topanga's family is a bunch of dirty hippies" trait). Or you're Judy Winslow and the producers of Family Matters erroneously think that Steve Urkel is cute and/or hilarious enough to carry the show and that they can 86 the adorable more laid back version of Rudy/Olivia.

However, my least favorite version of this is Phoebe Buffay's long lost brother, Frank, who appeared with his post menopausal wife asking Phoebe to be a surrogate mother for them, and then never appeared again. There was even an episode where we don't see Frank, but where Phoebe has to babysit for the triplets she carried and birthed. Frank, you deadbeat brother, you pretty much owe big sister Pheebs a kidney and a lung if she wants it. (I guess choice movies like The Other Sister and Lost in Translation made Giovanni Ribisi too good for the small screen.)

Did you cut your hair? You look...different. Off screen demands can lead to actor replacements. Cory Matthews got a new and (in my opinion, more obnoxious) actress to play the younger sister. I guess the old Morgan wasn't growing up cute enough for their liking. And of course, let's not forget Roseanne and the two Beckys. I never knew why they didn't do the same thing on Full House. So many opportunities to stop paying the Olsens a double salary and bring in an adorable four or five year old. (Hell, a twelve year old Macauley Culkin in drag would have been cuter than those two radioactive Cabbage Patch creatures.)

But to be fair, there was probably a good reason for it. You know how much the blind/deaf organizations are complaining about Helen Keller in the new revival of The Miracle Worker being played by a non disabled actress? You just know that the deformed lobbyists would have been pissed if Michelle had been played by a non-troll.

It'll bring us together! If you're just not sure your families are blending well, there's always one way to ensure that everything turns out fine. Pump out a baby! It'll belong to both of you and bond with both sets of siblings. See Lilly from Step by Step and Erin Silver from 90210 (the latter currently slutting it up on new 90210). Adopting a kid from Vietnam also works fine (see the Brewer-Thomas family). This usually works, oddly. I have no idea why--babies and toddlers are the greatest anaphrodisiac since imagining Patty and Selma naked.

Late in life sibling. Even if you're over 40 and you've told all your drinking buddies you're an only child and that your dad is dead, you can always gain a sibling late in life by leaving your Boston bar based sitcom and setting up shop as a radio shrink in Seattle. Best of all, he'll love all the same pretentious crap as you.

The Brady Bunch from hell. I sure do love mixed families. Stepkids galore! And there's always a sexually charged atmosphere when two adolescents come into the same family. Josh and Cher. Kelly Taylor and David Silver (granted, one sided). Marsha and Greg. (Hey, I know nothing really happened but unless E! True Hollywood Story has been lying to me, more than one director had to throw some cold water on Maureen and Barry and tell them to project a brotherly/sisterly vibe that wasn't straight out of V.C. Andrews.)

Honorable mention to Bill Henrickson for saddling Sarah, Ben, and Teeny with five extra siblings, two extra sort of moms, a bundle of opposite sex issues that their significant others will be untangling for years to come, and in the case of his third kid, a horrible non-name.

Build a Better Chick Lit: College Life

I'm starting a new blog feature--posts where I break down the cliches that I love to hate about certain books/movies/TV shows. I call it: Build a better chick lit. Here's the college edition.

I used to love reading books and watching TV shows and movies about the college experience. It's so...collegiate. It's a world unto itself. Where it's always fall and professors are always throwing intimate parties at their houses and the lessons we learn in books somehow always reflect upon real life. Where there are mixers and box socials galore. As may be obvious, I'm telling this from the POV of the female protagonist since the whole Animal House frat boy thing has been done to death. Here are the staples of college life as told through fiction:

Bitchy roommate. If you're a freshman, you get usually stuck with a roommate, and she's not just a bitch. She's a rich bitch. She spends her time analyzing the different levels of sarcasm ("I love your new top!" versus "I love your new top--I wish I could get away with shopping at the Salvation Army"). She's got a thousand pictures on her wall of her and her blonde cute female friends in a variety of places from St. Tropez to Asspen. And, as I learned from Prep, she's got the perfect cute flowered bedspread which marks her as part of the upper echelon of society.

World weary 21 year olds. Our main character, if she's a senior, spends the bulk of her time talking about keggers of years past in a world weary tone of voice that suggests that she's been there, done that, and had the hangover to boot. Like Chloe (she of the novel Chloe Does Yale written by Yale's real life former sex columnist, and yes, I can think of at least two things wrong with that title, too) regales us with stories of how as a freshman, she was declasse enough to go to a dive bar in four inch heels and a tight pair of jeans in the same tone of voice that Kanye probably uses to describe how he wore an off-white vest his first time at P. Diddy's White Party.

What, me study? No one ever studies unless a test or paper is impending and it's 85% of your grade and you're going to flunk out unless you make haste to the library. Anybody who so much as glances at a syllabus early in the semester may as well move into the Lamba Lamba Lamba house, stat. No normal student has time to study in advance.

Like Charlotte Simmons (of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, a screed against college students who dare to have fun), who was too busy spending the weekend shedding her hymen all over a hotel's posh sheets after the fall formal to bother with writing an essay until the morning it was due. And of course, there's always a mad dash at the last minute because no else seems to have perfected the time-out that Zach Morris made famous (maybe he had it copyrighted).

I used to think this was just something to be found in the annals of fiction. But one of my suitemates senior year left off her entire thesis till the last few weeks of the semester and as a result subsisted on Pilsbury ready made cookies every night so she'd have time to work on her paper. As soon as you see that detail in a movie somewhere, you'll know I'll have sold my screenplay.

Always a Mary Anne, never a Ginger. This one's mainly related to books. The main character's never drop dead gorgeous. Sure, they'll get Scarlett Johansson or Amanda Seyfreid or Julia Stiles to play her in the film and the girl on the cover will always have a bitchin' bod. And she's never ugly (in fact, she's usually pretty cute), but she's meant to be an Every Woman type and she knows it. She'll drop so many lines about being self-conscious about her body that the woman settling in to read will feel justified turning off the treadmill and picking up a pint of the chocolate swirl strawberry ice cream. So we have Chloe, despite her charming silhouette on the cover, angsting over her excess fifteen pounds at Yale's Exotic Erotic (aka, the Ivy League's answer to Hefner's scantily clad Valentine's Day party), or internally sighing over having to go to the gym to compete with the anorexic automatons.

Of course, when it comes down to the big date or the important formal, the protagonist always pulls out all the stops to look incredible. But at 9 am when she's late for her English discussion group, she's a sweat pants wearing, flat-haired, bleary eyed hot mess.

Star pupil. Somehow, professors will be in awe of our heroine's shining intellect based on the fact that she did the assigned reading. (Hey, every other student on campus is busy sexually servicing barnyard animals.) If she not only did the required reading but read a couple of articles on the syllabus that were just "recommended", well, expect stars to fall from the sky, along with coveted research positions that most grad students are giving their eye teeth for. If Charlotte Simmons and little Joey Potter had been real freshmen given such coveted job offers, they would have been found on campus so badly mutilated by jealous overworked TAs that no amount of candlelight vigils and Take Back the Night marches would bring them back.

Orgy porgy, orgy porgy! When they're not pulling all nighters and studying under trees, college students enjoy a non-stop orgy lifestyle. Nowhere is that true more at The Rules of Attraction's college, Camden, where the semi conscious sex with townies is the average loss of virginity scenario, where smeared ketchup at the dining hall reminds them of the weekly abortion being procured by someone somewhere on campus, and where everyone's bi because it's just easier that way.

I have to admire Tom Wolfe for managing to make his book something more than Animal House lite. I have a feeling that when he prepared for Charlotte Simmons, he knew he'd have a hard time making his fictional DuPont seem more depraved than anything Bret Easton Ellis cooked up. So while I might ordinarily have responded to the detail about the drugged girl being carried off on frat boy's shoulder while feces trickles out of the leg of her pants with "Ewww, Tom, why couldn't you have written about a girl who was fed roofies laced with Pepto!" I suppose I have to give him his dues.

Culture clash. Because college is so debauched it would make Caligula, Hunter S. Thompson, and Hedonism-bot all cluck their tongues and say, "In MY day..." most writers rely on the innocent outsider who's supposed to gape at the horror of it all. Tom Wolfe once again wins because you can't get much more horrified than Charlotte Simmons' indignity at seeing a scantily clad actress on the cover of a Cosmo magazine left in the common room.

Here I have to give Prep (boarding school, not college, but still) some love because while it's all too easy to make your heroine head for the fainting couch every five minutes, the protagonist here felt some major culture clash for a pretty good reason--they're all east coast summer home owning types and she knows it.

That's sexual harassment, and I can take it. No girl seems to get out of college without at least one rape attempt on her resume, if she's halfway decent looking, three if she's a real looker, and one per season if she's Kelly Taylor. And professorial misconduct is absolutely de rigeur. Charlotte Simmons shocked me by getting quite bit of unwanted male attention from students but never from a prof. Joey Potter and her English professor made out a little, but that was okay because he was cute and so beloved by students that he often had to pull a Dr. Jones to get away from all his adoring fans during office hours. (Yes, I'm serious.) Topanga got a creepy come on in her dorm room from a prof played by Fred Savage (hey, that's what you get for passing up Yale--you could have been Harold Bloom's lovething, but no, you had to settle for sexual harassment from Kevin Arnold, Ph.D.).

These professors make Clarence Thomas look like a choirboy. After a steady diet of sitcoms and chick lit, I assumed that I'd have to show up to my first college lecture with RapeX and mace.

O Captain, my Captain. There's always that professor who mentors the main character(s), inspiring them to do lame but camera-friendly stunts when said teacher leaves, like rising on their desks screaming "O Captain!" or riding their bicycles after their teacher's departing car (that's Mona Lisa Smile, for those of you who had better things to do than go to the movies in 2004). For those of you wondering how you make that kind of effort if the teacher doesn't get kicked out, you're not paying attention. Good teaching means getting fired by a square administration who just doesn't get it. Anybody who actually stays and teaches clearly has never asked themselves the question, "How do I reach these keedz?"

Once again, much love to Prep for having a teacher character whom the rich bitch set mocks for her poor fashion sense and who clearly is trying to be that kind of mentor to protagonist Lee Fiora but pretty much just makes her life miserable.

One book to rule them all.

So, which of my favorite books/shows make the cut in terms of being the most cliched of all? We can rule out Chloe Does Yale. It fails at portraying college as anything close to depraved on the first page when the campus sex columnist won't even flash a freshman a single breast for free admission to the naked party (damn you, glossy pink cover, for promising something you failed to deliver!).

Bret Easton Ellis's The Rules of Attraction rocks the debauched, world weary characters, but fails on the teacher/class front because everyone's too jaded to care about GPAs or mentors.

I Am Charlotte Simmons comes close but it's ultimately College FAIL because Charlotte Simmons' self deprecating quotient is lacking. Charlotte is quite attractive and knows it. In fact, in one chapter when she and another character are commiserating over not having boyfriends and being on the fringes of the college scene, Charlotte's new friend mentions that she wouldn't mind trading legs with the dumb bimbo flirting with the stupid jock. Charlotte thinks to herself, "Wait till you see my legs"--sorry, babe, you haven't learned to internally either deprecate the paucity of your tits or the overabundance of your thighs.

Sadly, I think Dawson's Creek comes closest--we've got the debauched school party scene from the POV of the sheltered smart girl (consisting mostly of Joey at a party staring disdainfully at the cleanest, most candle/incest lit frat bathroom in the entire world while sighing over erstwhile lover Dawson at a "wild party"), the smart girl acing every hurdle in her path, the vaguely inappropriate professorial relationship, and the rich roommate. Though Joey is clearly a hottie, she still gets all her self deprecating points because, as people are always telling her, "...you're beautiful, and you don't know it...you're smart and you don't believe it...you're the kind of girl that other girls get compared to."

Where Are They Now?: The BSC Edition

Be honest, you don't really want to know whatever happened to the kid who played Paul on the Wonder Years or that dog from Full House. (Okay, okay, he went on to play Air Bud.) Let's focus on some people whose fates we really want to know!

Kristy. CEO and/or founder of pretty much every organization at Stamford's Women's Correctional Facility where she's been for the last eight years since Karen Brewer was found on the third floor of the Brewer mansion with an ice pick in her skull. She's currently pioneering the Penpals program where women in prison write to girls between the ages of five and twelve.

Mary Anne. Owner of Cute Overload, 4chan, icanhascheezeburger.com, and Cute Things Falling Asleep, Mary Anne decided long ago that the best way of sublimating her pesky urges (same sex or otherwise) was by delving into all things saccharine. Of course, let's not forget that MA is pretty passive aggressive and downright nasty when push comes to shove. She's capable of sighing over Keropi frog wearing a bow tie one minute and laying off an entire factory of Indonesian children going blind as they create I made you a cookie but I eated it pencil cases the next.

Claudia. In between stints at the Tracy Gold Center for Bulimia, Claudia went on to use her love of art and pop culture in a unique way. Remember those adorable little girl icons we adored as kids? Yeah, Claudia's the one that made Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite into the wet dream of the type of guy whose favorite show is Toddlers and Tiaras. And I hear she's behind Dora the Explorer's transition from moon faced, adventurous toddler to fashion and weight conscious tween.

Stacey. Stacey's a hobag at heart. No, not for money--dad keeps her in insulin and apparel from Bloomie's, after all. But she's always going to be the BSC's best lil attention whore. After doing the model slash actress slash accountant thing, she finally figured that the best way of stretching out her fifteen minutes was to publish a memoir. As soon as Ed McGill kicked the bucket (work induced heart attack), Stacey published Hypoglycemic on Arrival, where she discussed what really happened when her dad showed up the night before her wedding begging her not to go through with it. I'll give you a hint. It makes his line in Stacey's Lie ("How would you like to go buy yourself a pretty summery something to wear to dinner tonight? I'll take you to the Lion's Lair") look as wholesome as a PBS creation.

Dawn wrestles with her two sides--the independent, "You don't own me," "That's Ms. Schafer if you're nasty!" side and the "I wanna be Travis's girl" part of her persona. She published a sequel to the The Beauty Myth about how wearing ripped sweat shirts looks hot and how to best do Sexy Face on your MySpace page pictures...and how all of those things are examples of how patriarchy sucks out our souls, puts them through a blender, and makes Oppression Shakes out of them.

Mallory. Like all former ugly three legged eight winged ducklings, Mallory probably does everything (and everyone) to seek validation of her freckled, pale, droopy assets. So when I stumbled onto the blog, Confessions of a College Call Girl, I realized that our little Mal had grown up.

I could tell from stuff like this:

I think that's part of why I do this. I've felt like such an ugly duckling all my life and the idea that men want to fuck me--want to fuck me so bad that they'll PAY for the privilege, just really gets me. I had at least 5 different men tell me I was beautiful. That word slays me every time.

Or this...

I know now those boys at school were so mean to me because they wanted to fuck me. They could feel the latent sexuality radiating off of me, sending signals to their underdeveloped hormones. But I was too smart, too brazen, and too impossibly scary for them. I was an adult taste like caviar, and they were accustomed to cheeseburgers.

Jessi. Oh, you didn't think she actually became a ballet dancer, did you? That would be too easy. When she hit the big 1-4, she inherited Aunt Cecilia's metabolism and her dreams of Swan Lake disappeared along with her size zero hips. On the plus side, she still had her rigorous training, her great posture, the organizational skills she learned at the knee of Kristy Thomas, and Aunt Cecilia's sense of sass. And trying to get Becca and Charlotte ready for that play in BSC Summer Vacation was perfect prep for founding her own Runway School.

Abby. Oh, Abby-come-lately. I just don't care what happened to you. What is it with girls with A names trying to insinuate themselves into already established groups? There's our Abby. And Andie McPhee whom everyone hated because she just wasn't Joey and yet had the audacity to date Pacey. And Audrey who filled the sex/drugs/rock'n roll vacuum of Dawson's for a couple of seasons. And poor Andrea whose overachiever status and penchant for Hispanic pro life law students never won her any favors around the Peach Pit gang.

Anyway, Ann M., you know the rules. When a blonde leaves, another blonde should take her place, and when a brunette leaves, another brunette should replace her (or at least that's what I learned from Shannon Doherty's 90210 departure)--strike one against Abby. So what happened to Abby? In my vision, she went into that part of the hallway we never see, along with Stewart Minkus, Mr. Turner, Chuck Cunningham, Tiger from The Brady Bunch, and Judy Winslow.

And the rest. Logan's the inspiration for the Vince Vaughn/John Travolta film Domestic Disturbance, Shannon went to high school and changed her name to Tracey Enid Flick, Janine Kishi writes webcomics under the pen name Randall Munroe, and Gabbie Perkins is in a weather balloon still orbiting the earth.

Build a Better Chick Lit: The Nanny Diaries

The Nanny Diaries is a timeless tale of chick lit...ery. Our protagonist, an NYU psych major, goes to work for an Upper East Side (read: insane) family and learns a lesson...the lesson being that rich people with hired childcare are obnoxious snots. Which I already knew. (Hey, one of my high school yearbook jokes was "You know you're from _____ton if you fondly remember your darky nanny.")

Let's meet the cast of characters. FYI--this book is so incredibly paint by numbers. I see it less as fun lite poolside reading, and more as the template I'd suggest to anyone writing a chick lit book about a pretty, spunky everygirl who takes a job she hates while trying to woo the guy she likes with a hefty side of what passes for wit nowadays. First off, the characters aren't fleshed out people--they're archetypes. Most of them don't even have real names.

Meet the cast

We have Mrs. X, an uptight sour puss. She's a stay at home mom obsessed with getting her five year old son into the right kindergarten, into the right afterschool activities, and on the right playdates, yet who somehow spends less time with her kid than workaholics Miranda Hobbes or Murphy Brown. And she takes out all her frustrations--sexual and otherwise--on the help.

(Except Stepfordier.)

Our protagonist, Nanny. Yes, her name is actually Nanny. No, it doesn't make it better that her friends occasionally call her Nan.



The token love interest: Harvard Hottie. He's from Harvard. He's hot. What more could any woman want? Nanny meets him in the X's building. And yes, that's what Nanny refers to him as. H.H. for short.




Mr. X. Workaholic extreme, goes to any length not to hang out with family. See also: philandering douchebag.



Grayer Addison X. (Yay, a real name! I guess Emma and Nicola's editors thought naming him Baby Boy Doe was a bad idea.) He's five. His mom would probably sell him to the circus if Parenting magazine said it was a good idea, and his father has barely any idea he exists. I actually feel pretty sorry for him.



So, what else makes this book Chick Lit by Numbers? You can tell that the two authors (themselves former nannies and first time book writers) broke down what makes a book chick lit, diligently filled in scenes and characters, and voila--insta book. Here we go:

A hilariously embarrassing scene. Our heroine has to undergo some indignity. Bonus points if the sexy guy sees her. Think Bridget Jones's cellulite ridden ass bouncing up and down the fireman pole on TV for all to see. Or Jane Eyre's skirts blowing out in the wind exposing her petticoats while Mr. Rochester takes his daily constitutional in the garden. (What? You didn't read the unexpurgated Eyre?) In this case, Nanny has to accompany the X's to a work-related Halloween party to watch Greyer. Nanny and Greyer are both dressed as Teletubbies. Horror of horrors, Harvard Hottie sees Nanny in the elevator dressed as Tinky Winky.

A healthy dose of self deprecation. Chick lit chicks have made an art out of being confidently self-deprecating. Of course they're still white chicks with loving families, so a line like "I went back to my cardboard box under a bridge to whore myself out for a sandwich" is too deprecating. "I scanned the wardrobe of my three bedroom apartment wishing I didn't have so many cute outfits" is too confident. Nanny has rich parents, a grandmother who spoils her rotten, but lives in a sixth floor walk-up studio apartment that she shares with a bitchy flight attendant.

Of course, in my experience, the best way to make a girl likable but not too intimidating (at least according to my dear two dimensional friends) is her dress size. A size zero and she's too intimidating. Anything in the double digits and the reader feels too superior. But make her a pretty girl who's carrying a teensy bit too much fat (and who bitches about how orgasmic chocolate chocolate surprise is and how masochistic anyone who voluntarily uses the Stairmaster is) and she's every woman! And that is why they call it a perfect size six.

Evil employer. Employers in chick lit books about work are ruthless castrating bitch goddesses. For example, Mrs. X cares about getting her son into the perfect kindergarten, but has no idea he's even had the croup. The spunky heroine still goes to great lengths to defend her when push comes to shove. Whether it means hunting down lingerie that her boss's husband's left in the bedroom (yeah, I know, awkward), or running clear across Paris to let Nuclear Wintour know about a buy-out she's already aware of, our heroine endears herself to the reader by licking the hand that smacks her.

Protracted romance. There's got to be something inane keeping chick lit girl from the boy of her dreams. Anything from, "Um, I have to find myself, and get involved with art, and make out with the homosexual spaz who just came to town with his neurotic schizoid sister," or the fact that he thinks you wear snowman sweaters as a matter of course. In this case, it's H.H.'s idiot friends. After work one night, Nanny shows up at a bar to down a martini and internally kvetch, and winds up meeting H.H.'s high school friends who hit on her and ask her if being a nanny means she sleeps with her boss's husband.

Our angel wears Prada. Bourgeois sensibilities are the name of the game here. Whether she's Emma Bovary or Carrie Bradshaw, there's no ill (AIDS, ennui, a broken engagement) that an expensive garment won't cure. No matter how hideous the article of clothing, as long as it's stamped with a designer label, all is good. Even if she's a self professed smart girl who doesn't know an eyelash curler from a hole in the ground, when Pat Field breaks out the Chanel mink pashmina or the Burberry jumpsuit, it's on. And Nanny is no exception. When Mrs. X, the original Louis Vuitton mom, says she doesn't want a pair of silk lavender Prada heels, and tells Nanny she can have them, our little minx explodes: "PRADA! As in Madonna. As in Vogue. As in, watch me walk off in style..."

If you'd like to read this for yourself...well, clearly you haven't been paying close attention to this blog post. But hey, maybe you'll be able to churn out a book for yourself.

The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

This is yet another Francesca Lia Block story collection. After Girl Goddess #9, it was my favorite, and I'm ashamed to admit that Charm was my favorite story. One of the back cover reviews describes this collection as "lush beautiful words [that] turn modern-day Los Angeles into a fantastical world." I call it Franny's Fractured Fairy Tales.

Charm

Looks like Francesca "Don't call me Franny!" Lia Block churned out a short story with yet another "Oh, life would be so much easier if only I were ordinary looking!" protagonist. This story is a convoluted Sleeping Beauty re-imagining, where the title character is Rev, a gorgeous drug addled woman who sleeps with men in exchange for heroin. (Get it? She pricks herself and falls asleep?)

Rev goes to a party with some creep called Pop who shoots her up with the good stuff at the house of same actress named Charm. Then while she cruises on the heroin, a bunch of guys take pictures of her and I assume try to violate her seven ways from Sunday. Charm shows up and kicks out the guys, then invites Rev to stay while she recovers from the addiction. Only in FLB world can letting a drug addict end without Charm's TV, stereo, CD player, and basic faith in humanity disappearing into the night.

Charm helps Rev kick the habit and then it turns out that they were both adopted as kids and were part of the same family who apparently pimped them out and had pornographic photos taken of them. But now that they've discovered each other, they can become lovers, and all is well.

Quotable quotes

Was the curse that she was born too beautiful? Had it caused her real parents to abandon her, fearful of the length of lash, the plush of lip in such a young face? FLB, goddamnit, stop cribbing from your notes from back when you wrote copy at Maybelline. Was it the reason the men with cameras had sucked away her soul in little sips because any form that lovely must remain soulless...? Francesca, I swear to god. And no, you don't get bonus points for alliteration.

Was it what made Old-Woman-Heroin's face split into a jealous leer as she beckoned Rev up to the attic and stabbed her with the needle that first time? Oh, FLB, you took this tired old Sleeping Beauty metaphor way too far. Is Old-Woman-Heroin an old washed up heroin chic model, who at the old crone age of 35 cursed Rev out of jealousy at not being invited to baby Rev's christening in a toilet bowl in a bathroom at that bar off Avenue A?

(Mirror Mirror on the Wall/Who's the most emaciated of them all?)

Credit where credit's due

I have to give Rev some credit. Her breasts are described as "heavy" and "satiny." It takes some serious talent to shoot up heroin and still retain a figure that Kate Winslet, Beyonce, and Crystal Renn would envy. (Maybe she was also mainlining KFC.) I'm surprised FLB didn't depict Rev as her usual skinny, heavily eyelinered, vaguely feral looking girl. I was assuming less a blissed out Christina Hendricks with a syringe in her arm, and more Rachael Leigh Cook in a white tank top and scowl.

I'd provide a photograph of what Rev actually looked like, but the closest thing I got when googling for voluptuous heroin addicts was Lenny Bruce's bloated autopsy pictures.

Wolf

This one's about a girl whose stepfather is raping her so to grandmother's house she goes to take refuge. Eventually, she makes it to Granny's where PedoWolf finds her. In a fit of rage, she takes Granny's shotgun off the wall and fires two warning shots...into his head. Granny takes the blame for it, and it's implied that all turns out well.

Between this one and the last one, I'm starting to wonder what it is with FLB and child molestation. Is it that common, and if so, why didn't it happen to me? Sure, I'm not a big eyed, elvin-like waif, like a trademarked FLB character, but c'mon. It's enough to make a girl start screeching to every creep on the A train, "You didn't molest me! YOU DON'T LOVE ME!"

Movie tie-in

Incidentally, the Little Red Riding Hood as molestorino story is quite common. I think I even saw a film version.

And yes, getting kisses on the lips from John Stamos before he tamed the savage beast that was his mullet counts as child abuse.

Bones

This one is FLB's Star Trek fanfic that accidentally made it into this collection. (Stupid editors.) Who knew? I always thought she'd be a Spock fan.

No, no, I kid. It's about the legend of Bluebeard, but this time, Bluebeard isn't an evil nobleman who kills his wives. He's a rich guy named Derrick Blue who owns a huge house, is really big in the Scene, and kills the pathetic groupies who hang at his place. (Though I can't really blame him for offing these sad skanks--on the scale of groupie loserdom, Derrick Blue groupies rate just above Insane Clown Posse groupies and just below Tito Jackson groupies.) At one of the parties he throws, he meets a skinny pale girl who wears too much eye make up. Ah, the FLB prototype, we meet again!

Skinny girl stays at his place, and he tells her he named himself after Bluebeard in the story and tells her stories about girls he's taken home in the past. The main character flees into the night and decides to tell the stories of all the girls he supposedly killed: This girl has a little knife to slash with, a little pocket knife, and she can run.

Meeting FLB at my hometown's independent bookstore

Sadako: So...did the girl in Bones kill Derrick Blue? And was Derrick Blue really a killer or was this just an American Psycho fantasy deal?

FLB: Ummm. Which story was this again?

Sadako: Uh...the...Bluebeard one?

FLB: Oh, um, yeah, sure. Want to know some more quirky facts about me? When I was thirteen, I wore nothing but lingerie and fairy wings and combat boots to school every day. And I have a tattoo of a fairy bathing in the moonlight on my left hip. And my cats are named Artemis and Luna--isn't that quirky?

The FLB fan girls swooned, I sulked and left without getting my book stamped with her autograph, and so ended yet another literary love.

Jennifer's Body

Here be no spoilers, so don't worry.

Jennifer's Body, for those of you not in the know, is the story of two girls, Jennifer and Needy. After a horrible fire at the local watering hole, Jennifer, in a daze, finds herself going off with a group of indie musicians in their mystery van--and no, she doesn't get rushed to the hospital to get her stomach pumped to remove gallons of semen. But she does develop a taste for human boy-flesh. It's up to Needy, Jennifer's best friend, to save the town of Devil's Kettle from the evil that is Jennifer.

And yes, there will be snark. No, not because I want to mindlessly leap on the Megan Fox hate bandwagon. Or because it was the worst film I ever saw--it gets a passing but not mindblowing C+/B- grade from me. But because due to the dearth of intelligent stuff out there, I know this movie will get more cred than it deserves. I fear that the alternatively minded teens who are no longer girls, yet not quite women, who are too smart for 90210 and Melrose Place redux, not mainstream enough for Vampire Diaries and not Canadian enough for Ginger Snaps will flock to this movie, unaware that there are way better horror movies out there that that feature slightly smaller and less famous tits.

The film is perfectly mediocre but full of eye candy, and it'll get a lot of young people thinking that dressing up like Jennifer is hawt, and even more "alternative" (read: cleavage bearing) than dressing up as Bella Swan! Demon girls are so the next cat girls. Take this shot of Jennifer when she comes back from hanging out with the indie band:

I'd be shocked if Hot Topic didn't start stocking red distressed leggings designed to look as though bloody flesh is being ripped from your legs.

And for the cute and vaguely popular girl who wants to experiment with a new look, but is scared at the thought of looking too edgy, there's the flag twirling outfit.

You can always add it to your wishlist under sparkle glitter, Emily the Strange Eyeliner, and Twilight sponsored DuWop lip venom. (And the fact that this lackluster lip plumper pads Stephenie Meyer's bank account is yet another reason why it's one of the most overrated of Sephora's top-rated beauty products of last year.)

And come on. By spring formal time, you know every girl who, in a bygone era, (by which I mean the eighties) would have taken a pair of shears to a cute pink vintage dress while playing the Psychedelic Furs in the background, will be resorting to some variation of this:

Grab a white dress off the rack, head to Ricky's for some fake blood, and voila. The generation who's probably never heard of Carrie, or Prom Night, will think they've come up with the hippest thing since blood red jeggings(TM).

And finally, this film simply reinforces the notion that in Girl World, Halloween is an excuse to sport something slutty without hearing any bitchy comments through the grapevine. Will any girls dress up as anything remotely creative, like a missing milk carton kid or Frankentist (half Frankenstein, half dentist)? No, your average girl will just sport a cleavage bearing tank top, a tiny schoolgirl kilt, cork heels, and a red lipsticked mouth slathered in Clamato juice and decide she's being Transgressive.

The film's main problem? The filmmakers were way too afraid to lose their "Megan Fox is a goddess" fanbase by portraying Jennifer as the genuine monster she is. Despite the tag line of "Hell is a teenage girl," and a few gory scenes, the most frightening thing about Jennifer seems to be, horror of horrors, that she'll steal your boyfriend, wear a sexier dress than you, and go behind your back to tell all your friends about the time you got your first period in a restaurant bathroom and had a complete meltdown because you thought you were hemorrhaging to death. Sure, there are a few scares, but let's get real--Megan Fox is never going to face the problem of Linda Blair or Anthony Perkins of being typecast into a horrifying role. Compared with the title character of Ginger Snaps where the lady really is a tiger, Jennifer's about as threatening as a Bratz doll. (Hey, they both have that eerie uncanny valley thing going.)

Which brings me to my greatest pet peeve with certain horror movies with regard to the transformation theme. There's nothing horrifying about a metamorphosis--whether it's into a gigantic bug or a bloodthirsty teen--if you don't lose something of yourself in the process. The protagonists of Jennifer's Body and Twilight blossom into creatures of the night so effortlessly, that it's enough to make you wonder if there are some hideous portraits of Nosferatus or succubi in an attic somewhere. There's so little self doubt or fear about the transformation that it makes Jason Patric's ambivalence towards becoming a vampire in The Lost Boys seem on par with MacBeth's "dagger" monologue by comparison. (Is that a sparkle I see before me?)

And though I snarked the wardrobe choices, they're not inherently bad. The movie just felt like an excuse for Diablo Cody to take all the elements she's seen in other horror films and make a pretty montage out of it. If you want a horror movie you can play dress up with, Jennifer's Body is your pick. But this Halloween, if you want some genuinely horrifying movies about the bloodier sex, I recommend The Exorcist, Ginger Snaps, Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed, Heavenly Creatures, Carrie, The Bad Seed, and the Masters of Horror episode directed by Dario Argento entitled, appropriately enough, Jenifer. (And for afterwards, when you need a bit of light comic relief--Teeth!) Those are all movies where you'd have to be one psychologically twisted puppy with at least eight DSM diagnoses to even think about wanting to emulate the main characters. And of course, they all have the Sadako Seal of Approval.

BSC #79: Mary Anne Breaks the Rules

In honor of Halloween, which I'm celebrating all month long (and by celebrating I mean gorging on candy and watching horror movies), here's a book that takes place around Halloween. Incidentally, Dawn and the Halloween Mystery came out the same month (October of '94) as this book. But when Mary Anne talks to Dawn on the phone, Dawn doesn't mention that there's an insane clown on the loose that she's trying to track down. Is having killer clowns rampaging just an everyday occurrence in Palo City? Remind me not to hold my coulrophobics unite convention there.

Synopsis:

Mary Anne notices that little Jake Kuhn has been feeling out of sorts because he misses his dad. (His parents are divorced and his dad lives really far away.) So she enlists her boyfriend Logan to provide some male guidance. Logan comes over a few times to play soccer and basketball with Jake while Mary Anne sits for Laurel and Patsy, Jake's younger sisters. It all comes to a crashing halt when Mrs. Kuhn comes home early and assumes Mary Anne has been doing the horizontal tango with Logan instead of watching the kids. Of course, she's on the hotline to the BSC complaining the very next day.

Naturally, MA lost all traces of the working spine she acquired in MA Saves the Day and MA's Makeover (Ann M. Martin wields that reset button like it's a Hitachi Magic Wand). So she's back to being Mary Anne the Meek and she doesn't explain what's really been going on to Mrs. Kuhn. The BSC worries that Mrs. Kuhn will call up other clients and tell them what bad sitters they are and that they won't get any more jobs. But about a week later, Jake tells his mother what really was going on, and everything goes back to normal.

Subplot: The babysitters supervise the kids while they come up with a haunted house for Halloween.

• On the book cover: MA leans against the garage door smiling while Logan gives Jake some soccer tips. Lesson one--the jock strap you're wearing, Jake? It's either too big or too small. Not pictured: Laurel and Patsy Kuhn who are presumably locked in the car-hole.

• Poor Jake. He's been described as a bit chunky, and just look at that cover. The only thing keeping that jacket on is the Perfect Fit Button(TM). He's the kind of kid who really needs help. Plus, can't you just picture Logan's reaction when MA asked him to mentor Jake? "I'll take him! Do you have him in a size small?"

• In one scene Stacey asks Logan where he gets his energy. Logan replies, "'Rechargeable batteries...[and begins] unbuttoning his shirt. 'Want to see?'" Can we say the most gratuitous fan service, apart from the Bada Bing? Though I must admit, if I had been a preteen when I first read this, it would've given me such a clit-on, the likes of which I usually only experienced when climbing the ropes in gym class or seeing a Boy Meets World character do a hair flip.

• When Jake tells Mary Anne he's jealous of Buddy Barrett (whose mother is getting remarried), that's when she realizes he needs to have a guy in his life. But she's afraid of criticizing Mrs. Kuhn. Okay, I know I mocked MA for not saying anything to Mrs. K, but this I can grok. My friend's sister's boyfriend's cousin works on Kate...Plus Eight and one day he got reamed out by the Divorcee Gosselin for playing Hot Wheels with Aaden on his break because "how dare [he] imply that she can't provide a male influence in his life? Aaden has plenty of male influence from when He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken used to live with us and from the bodyguard, handlers, and my publicist Lance." (This is probably why none of the little boys know how to pee standing up--well, that and Mama Gosselin's undiagnosed OCD.)

• Later, MA watches old Facts of Life episodes to seek out more fashion advice from Tootie, while Logan simmers at home because he can't pass on more male guidance to Jake (like foreskins need to be retracted for cleaning, and which Pokemon are butch enough for boys to like--Charmander and Bulbasaur, FTR). And then, Mrs. Kuhn comes over with Jake in tow to talk to Mary Anne...

• I decided to update this scene because things have changed since 1994 when this book was first published. We have Megan's Law, Law & Order: SVU, and we know that Snuffy was wrong to tell Big Bird to keep their friendship a secret. So here's the scene presented for a modern audience:
  

Mrs. K: "I had no idea Logan was coaching Jake in soccer. I had thought...well, I had been confused. At any rate, Jake told me that Logan was spending all his time with him, while you looked after the girls."
MA: "Yes."

Mrs. K: "That Logan didn't come over to see you, Mary Anne, but to hang out with Jake.

MA: "Yeah."

Mrs. K: "And Jake never told me that he was spending all this unsupervised time with an older thirteen year old boy without my permission who hasn't passed a background check. Logan? Why don't you have a seat?"

• In one scene, Logan and MA meet up with Stacey and her boyfriend Robert. Stacey tells them a story about how they and some other kids went to a French restaurant. One member of their party ordered sweetbreads (the thymus/pancreas of a calf) and it was so disgusting that none of them could eat their dinners so they just paid up and left. (The guy who ordered sweetbreads had to go home and lie down when he saw it.) Between this and the escargots incident in California Girls!, I have to wonder Ann M.'s beef is with foreign foods. Did she have an incident as a child where an authority figure stuffed foie gras down her throat?

• The other sitters act pretty cold towards MA after Mrs. Kuhn calls. When clients call asking for the girls to sit, every time Mary Anne is free, someone else quickly volunteers to take the job instead. Mary Anne feels awful, and I don't blame her. I always thought that they could be fairly bitchy to her (especially in Mary Anne's Makeover). Don't you wish Erica Blumberg could play the Janis Ian to MA's Cady, and encourage her to take them down? This would so work since SMS has no Tina Fey-esque teacher to tell all the teen queens and wannabes to play nice.

• The haunted house plot. Some of the kids (Jake, Nicky and Buddy) want a funny haunted house, and the others (Vanessa, Haley and Matt) want a scary one. Since I've been to a real scary one, and barely lived to tell about it, I'll go with the first option. Okay, okay, it wasn't so much a haunted house as it was the time I was trying to get into this guy named Christian's pants, and his idea of a date was watching the video of Andrew Lloyd Webber's CATS in its entirety and I had to go along with it. (And yes, he did turn out to be an Oscar Wilde reading, Streisand ticket holding friend of Dorothy, and no, I haven't really recovered from the trauma.)
  

Happy Halloween everybody!